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Biography
Chauncey H. Griffith (1879–1956) was an American printer and typeface designer.
Griffith was born in the U.S. state of Ohio, and began his career as a compositor and pressman. In 1906 he joined the Mergenthaler Linotype Company as part of their sales force. He became sales manager, and oversaw the entrenchment of Linotype equipment as the industry standard in newspaper and book composition.
Griffith advanced to become a vice president for typographic design, working closely with the typeface designers William Addison Dwiggins and Rudolph Ruzicka. He developed the typeface Excelsior in 1931 and it was widely adopted as a text and display face for newspapers across the United States. While Griffith was head of typographic development, Linotype issued revivals of Baskerville, Granjon, and Janson. In 1938 Griffith designed the typeface Bell Gothic for the Bell Telephone Company's directories.
Griffith's typeface designs include:
Ionic No. 5, 1922–1925
Poster Bodoni, Poster Bodoni Compressed, 1929
Granjon, 1930
Excelsior, 1931
Paragon, 1935
Bookman, 1936
Opticon, 1935–1936
Memphis Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic, 1936
Janson, 1937
Bell Gothic, 1938
Ryerson Condensed, 1940
Corona, 1941
Monticello, 1946